News-Record.com

Yippeeee!!!!!!!!!

Yahooooooooo!!!!!!!

YeeeeeeeeeHAAAAW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Public Schools RULE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let's not change a THING!!!!!! There ya go Guilford County. Another plug that you're doing a FIIIINE job!!!!!! Keep it up!!!!!!

I'm SOOOOOOOO proud of our public schools!!!

SSSSSSSSSSOOOOOOOOOOO PROUD THAT I'M NOT CHANGING A THING EITHER!!!!!!! MY CHILD WILL STAY RIGHT WHERE SHE'S AT:

PRIVATE SCHOOL!!!!!!!!!!!!

I believe that Gongshu,,,the Samurai Statistician, may have already doctored the numbers on this one.

Off the subject, but,,,,

Seems that construction on the new Quad Trailers at S. W. Middle has come to a STOP...

Has funding for the Trailers dried up?????????

Is there some kind of Code Violation or Structural Problem?????????

Could someone with the N&R or maybe the Rhino look into the problem ?????

The public has the RIGHT to know.

Sharon Ozment was on Fox8 tonight repeating "Safety before Seats" over and over. Something about how the middle school roofs falling in were more important than geting the trailers set up in time.

There are lots of schools with trailers waiting. I guess there are only a few contractors that will even consider working in Guilford so they are in short supply.

OH, and big surprise, she blamed the whole thing on the commissioners for not giving them all the money they wanted.

Just more evidence, THEY DON'T PLAN AHEAD!

That man behind the curtain; is he the one that was in need of a brain????

This is all starting to make sense now.

Thanks

Yes, I spoke to Sharon Ozment today who did confirm that schools that were supposed to get mobile units this year won't get them until at least Sept. 8. She blamed the delay on the work being done to Eastern, Hairston and Kernodle, the cut in capital outlay funds by the county and not being able to purchase mobiles with leftover 05-06 capital outlay funds (since they had run out). You'll see a story about it and what schools it affects this week.

In some cases, schools have had weeks and weeks to get these trailers set up. They graded the land, they purchased the trailer and had it moved to the site and then ran out of money? I'm not buying this BS! Grier has something up his sleeve.

I bet if the parents decided not to send their kids until the schools were ready, GCS would find the money.

Remember parents...students are not counted absent until they actually show up for school. So, if they miss the first 10 days but attend the next 170, their report card will still read NO days absent, 170 present.

I plan to leave my child at home until I can visit her classes myself. If the kids are uncomfortably packed into the classrooms while we wait for the trailers to be set up, I will leave her at home until the work is completed. If Grier can wait until September 8th to get it right, so can I.

Has construction been haulted over at Northern too?

Also, since Grier wants to be patted on the back for finding these flaws over at Kernoodle, Eastern and whatever that other school was; then why did he wait till NOW to repair them? Supposedly he's known about them since last October--essentially the beginning of last school year! Why the delay in repairing?..uh, I mean "enhancing".

Was he hoping to take that new job in Charlotte and leave the mess for someone else?

The school board should be kicking his butt to the curb. And if they don't, the taxpayers should be kicking THEIR butts to the curb!

I can report that construction is ongoing at Northern Middle and High- that money is the bond, not capital improvement. The school in school housed at NWMS at some of our trailers, and some new is a different matter. I have heard that some of them have no telephones (safety issue)but they are all there.

"SAFETY BEFORE SEATS"

That's what the Great OZ was preaching...

If they are delayed because of money, why don't they just raid the bond fund like they do for everything else. The schools in Jamestown will never miss what they never had. It seems that Grier can always find the money for his innovative projects, but never can find it when it is truly needed for the vast majority of school children. When will Guilford County wake up and see what is heppening?

"Public ratings of the local schools are near the top of their 38-year range." Who were the fools that indicated in a poll that was the case? This is getting to be a joke. This is just P.R. spin being laid-out to fool companies considering relocation. Probably, Action Greensboro paid for the poll as part of their effort to polish up GCS' "image".

Stormy,

The Gallup poll is a national poll. It is not specific to Guilford.

Sorry about the confusion.

In this year's poll, 49% give the schools in the community an A or a B. The percentage last year was 48%. The percentage of A's and B's climbs to 56% for public school parents and to 64% when parents grade the school their oldest child attends. The nation's schools continue to draw the lowest grades, with just 21% of the public awarding them an A or a B.

First, remember that survey sampling error imposes on the degree of confidence that we should have on findings like this. A difference of 1% (48% vs. 49%) is utterly meaningless, as it is lost in the "wobbliness" of the results. With a sample size of about 1000, we can be 95% confident that the resulting percentages are accurate to within plus or minus 4%, generally speaking. That means that 56% could in fact be 52% or 60%, making an comparisons of numbers (increase, decrease, different items) within that range pretty much a waste of time.

That said, the interesting outcome here continues to be the Lake Wobegon-esque "my school's great, the rest of them are a mess" syndrome. Parents are more positive about their schools than are non-parents in the same local. We collectively believe that our community schools are doing better than those "on the other side of town." North Carolina is in better shape educationally, than are California, Michigan, or New York.

One interpretation of this is that people have more positive feelings where they have firsthand experience with the schools they are judging, whereas they think more poorly of "schools" as an abstraction. Perceptions - and that's what Gallup-type polling measures - about latter are arguably more influenced by political leanings or other agenda, so should be taken with a relatively larger grain of salt.

K

The latest Smith Principal was interviewed on Fox 8 this evening. He seems a good guy.

His definition of diversity seems to be the number of different nationalities his school has.

Funny how people define diversity in different ways.
In the school boards definition Smith is not very diverse at all.

Should anybody tell him. With talk like that he could be on his way out soon!

Jennifer,

This statement seems to be very misleading: "*Public ratings of the local schools are near the top of their 38-year range." Most peoiple would read that to mean Guilford County as "local schools". I hope that you clarify this when you publish your story, otherwise casualreaders will believe that you are speaking of GCS.

I know it's off-topic, but I can't help pointing out that while some schools switch from teaching Japanese to Spanish, there's a plan to get Mandarin into another one or two. At least some schools are forward-thinking.

Freddy,

There are some good things going on in a few local public schools. I will admit that. If Mandarin makes you happy--GREAT!

The majority of our schools though, have really big issues. I wish it were as simple as adding an Asian language.

It's surely NOT Rocket Science though to improve a school so that it can at least be passing the majority of its students.

The fact that Guilford county CANNOT do that, and the fact that they consistently add more and more "innovative" programs, is just getting hard to swallow. Our esteemed leaders seem to think that re-naming schools (calling them "Academies") and re-drawing maps year after year is more effective than requiring students to be accountable.

Until we (parents, taxpayers and teachers) change what we will tolerate from our Board of Education and administrators, we will just be getting more of the same.

Well said Karen.
If Grier had put the same effort and energy into our failing High Schools instead of early colleges five years ago then we would be in a much better situation today.
What benefits our society more? A few kids taking classes that they could of take at college later or passing those 3000 kids a year that are currently failing at Andrews,Smith,Central and Dudley?
If those kids were passing then stealing my daughter and forcing her to be bussed ten miles across town instead of walking 0.8 miles to our neighborhood school would not have been on the table.

I understand there are schools in dire need of getting sound basics understood and passed on the vaunted tests (although 80% of the failures by students are probably thanks to their parents' economic status and lack of time and energy, not because of teachers or curricula).

That said, my off-topic comment noted dropping one Asian language for another ubiquitous Spanish program, while at least one school will look to the future and teach Chinese. My purpose is not to discount problems elsewhere; I wanted to point up the backwards-motion evident at even out strongest-performing schools. Learning any language, but especially tonal ones like many Asian tongues, is very, very difficult in college, where virtually no students take them. Learning them early is by far the best practice. While many of you may not care, as your child may not be learning any foreign language at all in elementary (or middle or high) school, my concern is that the vey children who have already begun learning Japanese are now being shafted.

My sister learned Japanese fluently and it led to an international career. She has since also learned Korean, opening more possibilities. Her Japanese-American husband and she are alreday teaching their daughter three languages (she's less than a year old). That girl, I predict, will pass the "required tests" in every subject, while we worry about being sure the majority can fill out applications to work at Hardee's.

Dangit!! We don't even have a Hardees in High Point!

I find it very interesting that most of the percentages quoted in the article would result in a failing grade if earned by our children in school. Everytime I read about how our schools are doing, either the percentage passing the required tests or the public approval ratings, I see figures that would result in failing grades when these scores are earned in the local classroom by our children. But, we brag and say we are encouraged by how much better the schools are doing. Do I see a double standard?

Regarding the PDK/Gallup poll, their efforts are misleading (and that's charitable) when it comes to the issue of vouchers.

They are technically correct in saying that they've been asking about vouchers without using the word "voucher" since 1993. However, a quick read of their past reports (all previous years' reports are archived as PDFs on their site) reveals that they've been asking about the voucher issue from the start (1969 - they just used a different, and arguably much more neutral, question (that included the word "voucher" in previous years.

PDK, which describes itself as a dedicated advocate for public schools, changed the voucher question when it became clear that the concept was gaining public support (50% supported them in 1991). Their current question is markedly biased, as efforts by the Milton/Rose Friedman Foundation have shown (see http://www.friedmanfoundation.org/news/2005-08-23.html for details).